Our 6th visit to the Stately Home.....

[oneplusone]

Hi all, took the liberty of starting a new thread. Keep on posting!

Sorry I have to jump in and out of this forum but with a baby its hard...

OPO - You are so similar to me. I want to desperately make my family understand me snd they just dont. I once sent a letter to my sister, she sent one back to say she didnt agree with anything that i had said but idnt see why we couldnt just be friends?

At the moment my sister has said she only wants to see me 3 times as year as i have hurt her so much?! I saw her like this a few times and she was lovely and then on her last visit I text her and said i didnt feel comfortable with this arrangement and so wouldnt be visiting.

I just spoke with my dad who mentioned my sister and her kids and what they were doing etc and then i phoned him back to say that although i didnt sound it i was interested in them but it hurts too much to hear about them as i dont see them. It said it was in my hands.

Its not in my hands though, she only wants to see me on a superficial leverl, i cannot stand being false! I cant do it anymore.
She said she will never get over me hurting her not choosing her as my bridesmaid but she had hurt me so much for me to make that descion yet does not whant to know that, the message is i was a bitch to do this and it is all me...

sb9, you are right, we are so similar. Everything you have described wrt your sister is exactly how i feel. Am so sorry you are also going through this, as i know how much it hurts.

"she only wants to see me on a superficial leverl, i cannot stand being false! I cant do it anymore." This is me. What shall we do? It is so hard. Ideally i would just like to cut them off completely as i know it would definately be the best thing for me. BUT that also means my DC's being cut off from yet another section of their extended family. They already have no contact with their grandparents ie my parents and lots of other family members like my aunts and uncles as i have not gone to any family events like weddings etc as i know my parents would be there.

I would just feel too guilty depriving my DC's of their 2 aunties, 2 uncles and now, 2 cousins (my middle sister had her baby yesterday). Whereas with my parents i feel the benefits of cutting them out of my life far outweigh any disadvantages, wrt my sisters, it's not as cut and dried. Yes my sisters always hurt and upset me every single time we have any form of contact because they are so unaware of my feelings, but if I manage to keep that contact to a bare minimum, then it means i get hurt a little bit but not too much and my DC's can have some sort of relationship with their aunts/uncles/cousins. I guess it's balancing out the cost to me against the benefit to my DC's. If the cost to me becomes too great then i guess i will have to cut them off.

Unlike the pregnancy, i did receive a text from my sister's DH about the birth of their baby and i don't think i was the last to know. So i feel ok about that. But my younger sister phoned me during the day, i think it was to make sure i had got the news about middle sister. But whilst chatting she told me that middle sister and her DH had spent the day with her and her DH and they had all been together when middle sister's labour started. And i felt so upset. As usual, i was left out of it, nobody thought to phone me and tell me middle sister had gone into labour. I really feel i am treated just like you would a friend, not a distant friend, but a friend all the same, somebody who is not part of the family, somebody on the periphery, who you may or may not talk to about family things. And it hurts so much. Why do they treat me like this? Why don't they see me as an equally important part of the family. Why don't they ever think about how they make me feel? I know I haven't done anything to deserve to be treated this way. I know it is yet another consequence of my parents' singling me out and treating me so differently to my sisters. And perhaps they can sense that i am different and therefore treat me differently and keep their distance from me. But inside i am no different to them. I am just the same as them, when we were all children i was exactly the same as them, the only difference was that my dad abused only me and my mother neglected and abandoned only me. And the different way in which i was treated has had such a huge knock on effect wrt the relationship between me and my sisters.

How do I ever get over the unfairness of it all? The fact that I was worth less to my parents than my sisters; I was not valued or precious enough to my parents, i was the child who was not worth saving whereas my sisters were. Their attitude and feelings towards me must be so intrinsic and ingrained, i know there is no chance at all of them ever realising their own subconscious thoughts about me. And this will inevitably mean they will continue to hurt me all my life, every time i have contact with them. I really don't know if it is worth it just so my DC's can see them 3-4 times a year which is all it will probably amount to.

Perhaps right now it would be better for me to have a break from them, and give myself a chance to fill the void in my life where a sister/mother/close friend should be. If I do manage to find somebody who can fill at least a little bit of the gap, i think it will make me feel less vulnerable around my sisters.

I really need to think about whether my DC's will actually benefit from a relationship with their aunts/uncles/cousins where there is actually very little contact. I just don't know. Even if there is not much contact now, perhaps it will be of benefit later when my DC's get older and can have a more independent relationship with my side of the family. At least the tiny bit of contact now will have laid some foundations for the future where i can step back but still allow contact between my DC's and them. It is so very hard. I just don't know what to do.

For now, despite my saying on here that i didn't want to go and see my sister after she had the baby, when chatting to younger sister, i ended up agreeing to go and visit middle sister and new baby and also younger sister once she has moved into her new house.
But I am not going to rush over, will only go and vist when i feel ready.

What do we do now? I have no idea!

For me, I saw her but then felt I was selling myself short and being controlled. I mean who is she to say I can only see her three times a year plus on her terms?!

I suppose I have withdrawn for now. It hurst but then it all does so its no different. I guess I am hoping that by withdrawing and saying I cant do this will make her think.
I know deep down it wont because she is not capable of it. It will always be my fault. Afterall we are in this position because i didnt have her as my bridesmaid. Never mind all of the hurtful things she had done to me prior to this.

We are fighting a losing battle. A painful battle that i have no idea a way out of. All i want is a lovong family yet i am even ruining the one i am creating with my husband becuase i am so angry and depressed. Keep going to counseling is all i can do but so far its not helped. Just made me more angry at the moment.

Sb9, maybe the counselling needs to make you really angry, to get all your feelings out and make sense of them before you start feeling better? How long have you been going?

First lady for 14months! Had to stop due to money but stopped when i was angry. Now picked up again had about 5 sessions with new lady who i gel more with...

sb9, i so know how you feel, especially about fighting a losing and painful battle that there seems to be no way out of.

When you say you have withdrawn from your sister, what do you mean? Do you mean in your head only or in your head and physically? I am finding it hard to withdraw only in my head but maintain physical contact with my sisters. I guess the truth is that i have not withdrawn or detached totally in my head and emotionally as if I had, they would not still have the power to hurt me which they definately still do have.

I think the only way my sisters would have less or no power to hurt me is if i somehow managed to fill the gap in my life where there needs to be a caring, nurturing female figure. I know if i had such a person in my life, then i would be able to see my sisters, but be completely detached from them and not be hurt by them.

But so far there is nobody who can fill that gap. I don't really have any friends who seem to fill the gap even a little bit, most of the friends i do have seem quite needy themselves in their own way and so are not in a position to fill my gap. In a strange way, DH sometimes manages to fill the gap a little bit and so do the DC's as I know for sure they all love and care about me. I guess i will just have to keep searching and i know it is completely unrealistic to expect only one person to fill the gap, it will have to be lots of different people, i just need to make an effort to get out and meet lots of different people and hope some of them are the right ones. I think i have made the mistake of coming across as very needy in the past and been taken advantage of by the likes of that school mum i have mentioned on here. There was another mum i met who i seemed to become very attached to and i think i came across as very needy to her too and i have realised now anyway that i don't think she and i have as much in common as i first thought.

It feels as if i am in search of a 'Mrs Right' in the same way one searches for 'Mr Right'! It is quite funny in a way. But I am searching for a female Mrs Right, we need to be on the same wavelength and have certain things in common in order to 'click'. I have a good friend who i have known for 25 years and she and i are definately compatible, but she is single and childfree and so we now have much less in common than we used to. If she had got married and had children, she would definately have been my 'gap filler friend'. Oh well, i guess i will just have to keep on searching, like with the search for Mr Right, one just never knows who or what is around the next corner.

sb9, I agree with OSAHM, that perhaps you do need to allow yourself to feel your anger and think hard about who your anger should be rightfully directed against. Perhaps write a 'no holds barred' letter to those people and get it all out, swear as much as you like in the letter if that helps, but don't send it. Use it as an anger releasing vehicle, it might be hard to get started writing, but once you do, i really believe it will be hugely theraputic for you and will enable you to then move forward onto the next stage of your journey in healing and recovering from the damage done to you as a child.

Just wanted to post something that has just occurred to me sparked by another thread i was reading.

The other thread relates to a MNetter who was in an emotionally abusive relationship with a DH who had NPD. She talked about feeling guilty for meeting her own needs and finding it hard to stop feeling like this.

I have realised that I feel like this a lot of the time. The other day I even felt guilty for feeling hungry and having lunch (at lunchtime) because I knew that DH wanted me to do something for him at the same time. I have realised I often feel this way, I feel guilty for meeting my own needs. But the other day i suddenly became aware that i was feeling guilty, and actually told myself to stop feeling guilty about needing to eat lunch because i was hungry. I had told DH i wanted to eat lunch before i did what it was he had asked me to do and i was about to explain to him that if i didn't eat now my blood sugar would get really low and i would start feeling shaky and awful. But then i stopped myself and realised that it was ridiculous to feel guilty for needing to eat! Whatever DH wanted could easily wait, but my hunger needed to be satiated immediately, hunger is not one of those things that can wait. DH, to me, looked a bit unhappy, but didn't say anything, and I realised that i had actually been scared to say to him that his thing would have to wait whilst i had lunch. But that is so ridiculous. I was hardly being unreasonable for wanting to eat but until the other day i know i would have felt like i could not voice my own needs, i would have kept quiet, done what DH wanted me to do and then met my own needs, but i would have also felt unhappy and resentful about putting myself second. But i was the one putting myself second, if i did not speak up and tell DH what I wanted he wouldn't know and so i wouldn't have been his fault that my needs weren't being met. It would have been my fault. But until now i have been unable to voice my own needs in situations where they have clashed with DH's own needs as a) I have felt my own needs are not as important as DH's and if I feel that way about myself i can hardly expect other people to place any importance on my own needs and b) I have often felt too scared to say to DH that my needs will have to take priority over his on this particular occasion as he is certainly not used to me being assertive in this way and i was scared he would react badly.

The example above relates to a relatively minor thing like eating lunch, but the same thing i realise has been happening over lots and lots of different things and of course i know the whole problem originates in my childhood where I NEVER voiced my needs or believed they were important, at least as important as everybody else's needs within the family. As a child i did not voice my needs because i suppose i must have always had a sense that the others would take no notice, that my needs were not important to the rest of the family and would be ignored anyway even if i voiced them. But i remember my sisters never feeling like they had to keep quiet, they would always speak out if they wanted/needed something or something was not to their liking etc. I would just keep quite in all those situations. And my parents would always place importance and priority on my sisters' needs whatever they were and would often prioritise my sisters' needs over mine, thereby undermining my self esteem even more and reinforcing in my sisters' minds that they were more important and superior to me.

hello, I was directed to this thread on another forum - blimey, and there was me thinking it was all my fault all these years - so nice to realise that actually, the fault may lie elsewhere and its not disloyal to actually come right out and say "They you up, your mum and dad..."

A brief intro - Im a mum of 3, two boys and a girl, and usually reside over at BMC. But this thread is a breath of fresh air in a peculiarly reassuring way.

My own little family drama continues to unfurl, and as a mature aand intelligent women of a certain age, I am still astounded by the capacity of my parents to wreak havoc with my mental health and wellbeing.

On Sunday, i had a call from my dad. To whom I have not spoken in 3 years, and who resides in another country. Are we busy thismonrning, says he.

It seems he and my mother are in the country. And have been for 3 weeks. but this is the first contact they have made with me. I invite them to lunch to see their lovely grandchildren, and he tells me my mother is "too ill" to attend as she cannot manage steps.

(Now it emerges that she has travelled 6000 miles to get to the country, plus a good 1.5 hours to drive to where they are staying (older sibling) and have spent a week in a european destination with another sibling, partner and children. Yet cannot manage a 45 minute journey to mine because I have a doorstep and another step into the hallway. ) I let that one go.

My dad duly arrives, late, because he has been in the farmers market all morning with my sibling and mother, and wont eat, thank you, as he is full up from eating pasties as said market.

Thanks for that dad, my kids are starving hungry because we have been waiting for you.

There follows an awkward 2 hours when he makes smalltalk and demands I call my mother at some point. Presnts are duly produced for my boys, (jackets with a sports logo) and for my teenager daughter? Nothing. A £20 note shoved in her hand. Not even a little trinket from the airport - or even the aforementioned market.

This from the family that have not even let me know that they are in country. And this is the 3rd time it has happened.

The hurt I feel has surprised me, TBH. I thought I was immune to it all, but I am so angry with them for treating me and mine like this. What kind of parent? What kind of granparent? Clearly I was just a duty visit. Amongst all those obscure cousins, aunties and uncles.

The worst thing...my siblings knew for some time. And yet not one of them bothered to let me know. I saw them both at a funeral a month ago. They knew the folks were going to be here, as they would have had to organise passports for babies, so they sat there all smug, playing the "i know something you dont know" game.

I feel I have grown up in an entirely negative household, where nothing I did was good enough and my anger at the preferensial treatment of my siblings put down to envy, or me being "to sensitive". My darling husband maligned and lies told
about him to all the family. My sibling continuing this trend by bringing up things from when I was 12, throwing them in my face in front of crowds of acquaintances and generally trying her best to embarrass in order to make herself seem popular.

I resolve to cut them all out of my life and yet they still have the power to upset.

Hello Shongololo, the things you describe sound hurtful and it sounds like you have got used to this type of thing over a long time, but although you aren't surprised by it, it still hurts. Is it possible for you to get to a point where it no longer bothers you? Because it doesn't sound like they are going to change.

I have been feeling down for the last few days, tired, and feeling anger simmering, and being snappy and irritable with DH and DCs. I thought it was just hormones or tiredness but I realised today that it is obvious really why I feel these things.

It is because I was recently asked to do something which required some effort, time and concentration, to help a person who abused me in the past. I didn't feel I could say no. I would have been scared to say no. I had other things that I would rather do, which I haven't been able to do while I was doing this thing. I resented doing it. But I did it and I did it really well.

It triggered feelings from the past when I was made to do things I didn't want to do and I acted like I didn't mind because the consequences of showing I didn't like it would be bad for me and scared me more than actually doing the thing I didn't want to do. The suppressed anger from this is intense and when it is suppressed it causes depression. It's no wonder I've been feeling down and incredibly irritable! It's a bit like feeling abused all over again.

I was suppressing how I felt about doing this recent thing and I don't think it is a coincidence that I've been getting on with DD worse. Certain things she does used to remind me in the tiniest way of this person who abused me and trigger intense negative feelings which I should not have been feeling about my own DD! My mind was using her as a scapegoat because I couldn't face up to what the person did and that it was them specifically who did it. The more I have admitted it to myself the more the negative feelings have been redirected towards the person who deserves them and away from DD. I can't let these feelings towards DD come back and it depresses me if they are coming back. I feel like I'm failing.

thank you ordinarySAHM - I think that I have learned to distance myself and will again - its just raw at the mo. But i know they are on an aeroplane in about 2 hours, so I know they wont spontaneously drop in again now for a couple of years!

I do know what you mean about taking things out on your kids when you have had any kind of dealings with the abusers of your past - For me its a "Im rising above this, Im a better person, I can do this without it affecting me" sitation when i am put upon....but inside its still the same old me, craving positive affirmation that I am OK in their eyes. ANd then I hate myself for being so NEEDY and all that hate turns outwards and my poor kids bear the brunt.

My DD is now old enough for me to say "Im sorry love - Im lashing out at you because of XYZ with your gran - please fogive me and understand that I love you, im just stressed."

But now typing that, im psychologically in a place where I wonder if im not projecting my need for positive love and affirmation onto my poor girlie.

Ah what a head it all is.

Right, I'm trying to apply the 'gorilla experiment thingy' from posts and posts back to my situation.

DD is triggering my feelings about z and because I am not even willing to suffer a little bit of anything similar to the past by 'just taking it' and containing it myself instead of taking out my mood on her, I see it as being like the mother ape standing on the baby ape so that her feet don't get hurt by the hot floor of the cage.

So I'm going to decide I AM willing to take a little bit of pain in order to protect her from it. So when she triggers me I am going to fight really strongly the urge to react negatively towards her and fight the pattern of bad family background repeating itself.

I will deal with the feelings I am having by writing about them, away from the children, when I can.

...What you said about "Rising above it" has made me think of this Shongololo, and it does help me so thank you!

I'm not managing to cope with it.

I've got a load of thoughts that have come into my head and I can't get them into order and sense. My brain is so 'busy', like a computer that is running really slowly because you've clicked on too many things at once. I feel a kind of paralysis which is stopping me getting my everyday tasks done and that is making me anxious and tense that I haven't got enough time and something important might not get done and then something bad might happen. I hate the panicky feeling.

When anyone wants me to do anything 'extra', even friends inviting me to do something nice with them, and the children being demanding, I feel panicky and tense and irritable.

DH has asked me things like "What is wrong with you at the moment?" and "What are you thinking about" and I can't tell him. It's about stuff he doesn't like talking about and he gets angry if I talk to him about it for too long, so I can't relax enough to talk to him, knowing it might make him angry. Our relationship has improved since I talked to him less about that particular subject so I don't want to risk it.

I can't talk to my friends too much because there are normally children around and there is stuff they shouldn't overhear. Also people are uncomfortable around the subject matter and don't know what to say to me and don't want to think about it too much.

I've become scared of writing details on here any more since I got scared and had a load of posts deleted a while back.

I got so tense that yesterday I felt I was starting to treat the children unacceptably badly, so I've booked another session with Therapist even though I wanted to stop going and am in the middle of writing my 'thank you and goodbye' letter. The session isn't til Friday though and I feel kind of desperate. So I'm writing on here to try to get the desperate feelings out so I can cope til Friday.

Therapist will sort me out on Friday so maybe I can tell my brain to postpone thinking about it til then. Nothing bad is going to happen by leaving it til then. And I won't answer the phone if it looks like someone's number who is involved in the situation in case I say something 'unwise' while I am still mixed up.

Neglecting to do my SAHM tasks is going to make the panic worse so I will try to focus on getting all tasks out of the way. I'm just finding it so hard to concentrate.

Sorry, I'm sure nobody will know what to say to me.

I understand that paralysis. And I understand that lack of communication with hubby.

Last night I tried to talk to my DH about the situation with my folks. He was watching the liverpool game. So didnt want to chat. Even though 2 minutes after I stopped trying to talk to him, he decided he was tired and going to bed...

I want to be able to talk to him, if only to get a reassuring cuddle. But he gets so mad about my parents, my past, it ends up with him in a strop and me going into emotional concilliation mode. Then it all gets swept under a metaphorical carpet and Never SPoken Of Again.

Today I have achieved nothing. I have pondered my relationships with a variety of people and how messed up so many seem to be. And Ive examined my relationship with my own kids, in the hopes that I am doing alright by them.

I am beginning to think that maybe I should return to therapy, that now, 25 years on, I might actually be ready to confront my issues about my mother. I have done my father "work". But I never would talk about my mother in previous therepeutic situations.

I wonder if now, as a mother myself of a DD that is about to reach the age I was when I was abused, I am now able to see clearly how very wrong my mother was. How very cold. How very manipulative. How very unmotherly.

I have had a few lightbulb revelations over the last few days, so this experience has taught me the benefit of taking out your past and giving it a good airing once in a while. I guess we learn to deal with things at different times in our lives.

Thank you so much for responding to me, it's a relief to feel that someone has listened to me.

Your DH sounds a bit like mine. He is angry that my family mistreated me in the past but even more angry that they have managed to affect my life long term and are still affecting it now. He thinks they are 'twats' for what they have done and that they don't deserve all the time we have 'wasted' thinking and talking about them. He doesn't want to let 'twats' take over his life when they are worth little. He wants me to stop thinking about it but sometimes this is very hard. When things have gone wrong in our lives and it is connected to how I feel about the past, he says things like "That is another thing that is your f*ing (certain relative's) fault".

I often wonder if men get so angry about these things because they feel less manly due to not being able to do anything about it to fix it for us and protect us from it.

Like you say, I have also found that different phases in my life make different parts of the past come into my consciousness to be processed. Having children is a big one. Your DD reaching the age you were when you were first abused must also be a big one. When you look at her and imagine if it happened to her you can see how shocking it really is. What happened to you might seem like a shock all over again because your mind tries to numb it out and make it seem normal or not so bad as it is, to protect your mental health but imagining your children in the same position breaks through this denial and reminds you how bad it was.

Hello

Shongololo, OSAHM I can relate to much of what you are saying. I definitely found having a dd a big trigger to lots of issues I had buried.

I also found a job working with looked after children when I was just turned 30 a big trigger- but things were still very buried then and I didn't know what was wrong.

MY DS is being a bit bullied at school and it has brought up a lot of stuff for me. I've had quite a heavy week, therapy-wise. I have finally told someone (my therapist) about a particular teacher who behaved very inappropriatley towards me when I was 11-12. I have never told anyone before. I already knew by thta point that there was no use talking to my parents or siblings, I also belived it to be my fault. I'm not sure how I feel about it and I am aware it is just the tip of yet another ice-berg of memories.
It is my DDs' birthdays next month and so I have the whole what to do so as not to upset my motherr thing going on. It makes me so angry that I have to worry about such things when I should just be planning my little girls'parties. I can really see why our DH's get frustrated by it. My DH cannot understand why I don't just stand up to her or confront her. I'm just not ready.

On the up-side I am having a lovely day with my girls today.

ive spend the last couple of days jumping every time the phone rings. Thinking it will be her. I dont know why I should feel that way as she only every phones in a blue moon and then to talk about herself. But every time it rings I get a sick feeling in my stomach that i may have to confront her about her vileness. Because I know I will do it next time I speak with her. I know im just not ready yet either

Hello,
sorry to jump and out of this thread its just lack of time with a baby!

Can relate to so much of what is said. My husband is the same re anger towards my family. I was talking to my therapist about anger in general and it occured to me/us that i find being angry incredbily hard. I feel seething anger but flatten it. Its so hard to really get angry as I feel guilty for feeling angry. She thinks once i do get hold of my anger it will ease. But what do you do with it?!

Has assertiveness got anything to do with anger as i know i probably stored up anger from being walked all over and maybe i could assert myself more but i still feel so guilty. Hope that makes sense and anyone has any pealrs of wisdom!

Hi, can I join? Finding this thread is sort of like coming home.

I will post about my situation more another time, just wanted to bookmark this.

Hello SpikySauce (cool name!).

My thoughts lately have been about how I want the world to be black and white and find it difficult to get my head around it being grey.

There is a person who I was in denial about being angry with for a long time and the more I let myself feel the anger the better my behaviour towards my DH and DCs got, the less anxious I felt, and the more focussed on my nice life now I felt. So it seemed really good for me to hate him.

Then he got into a new situation in the last few weeks that made me feel sorry for him. I just couldn't feel that the bad things he had done made him deserve the new situation. I could see lots of good things about him as well as bad. This confused me, unfocussed me, and stressed me out.

When I see good things about a person I am angry with, or see that I can understand their reasons for doing things, I seem to stop allowing myself to feel angry. But deep down I still am. So I get tense, irritable, anxious and depressed.

What is the answer? That people don't have to be totally evil all the way through for me to be allowed to be angry with them? It seems that even really awful people who have done terrible things can have some good things about them. And it is possible to even love someone and still be really angry with them. Perhaps you don't have to hate them just because you are angry with them.

I feel like when I feel something positive I am betraying myself and my anger and doing something wrong or weak or twisted. Maybe I'm allowed to feel positive feelings about someone who has also made me really angry though. A bit like how our children make us really angry with their bad behaviour at times but we still love them and feel lots of positive feelings about them. The difference is though, that the little things your kids do that make you really angry at the time, you soon forget. I have some people though, who made me angry about things that I did not forget and the feelings haven't faded. Those things are too bad for me, personally, to forget. Even if the person does lots and lots to try to make amends.

I know this is fairly confusing and I feel more confused than normal. I had a phase of feeling quite clear about things before this.

"When I see good things about a person I am angry with, or see that I can understand their reasons for doing things, I seem to stop allowing myself to feel angry. But deep down I still am. So I get tense, irritable, anxious and depressed."

This is it, i feel terribly guilty for feeling angry with people. I feel i must be justified in why i am angry and often have to write a list of why i feel angry to put the guilt at bay! Its awful!

Do you think that maybe as my family dont seem to acknoweldge how their actions have hurt me that its becuase i dont feel i am allowed to be angry? I dont know just thinking...

Also, i keep being obsessed about writing to my sister to explain some things (i know opo we have said about wanting then to understand) but i found a letter on my computer i had forgotton i had sent, it was very heartfelt and my reply - well it didnt acknowledge any of it. I relplied to say i didnt know what to think as it was cold and unemotional to which i had a letter to say she was 'choosing not to respond to the emotional stuff in your email because i need to distance myself emotionally from you. all i will say is you know how much it hurt me when you didn't choose me as a bridesmaid (i cried and told you on the phone that i wanted to do it because i loved you) it hurt me so much i wonder if i will ever feel close to you again. but you know this so let's forget it and move on. "

Is it me or is it all about HER??? What about all of the things I opened up to her about ihn my letter, things that she had done to hurt me, why i felt the way i did, how things have affected ME!

God makes me so mad!

OSAHM and sb9, i know how you feel and what you mean, about being angry but also seeing the good and feeling guilty about being angry.

I think it is very common for all us to see people as good or bad and very hard for us to reconcile different types of behaviour in one person. What immediately springs to mind for me is it is not the person who is good or bad, but their behaviour which, at different times, is hurtful, insensetive etc or caring, kind etc. Therefore one can be angry about the hurtful 'bad' behaviour whilst also acknowledging the instances of 'good' behaviour. I am thinking out loud now, have not thought this through so could be way off the mark.

But it is something that is current with me too atm. It is DH who is my problem. He has shown me, at different times, very kind, caring behaviour, but also some quite nasty, bullying and insensetive behaviour. I currently feel confused about who he is. As how can he have been so nasty and hurtful at times and yet also, at other times, so caring and thoughtful? And like you said OSHAM, when i think about the good things he has done for me, i start feeling guilty for being angry about the bad things and think i should let them go. But like you said, even if i think i have let them go, they still have a hold over me and deep down i know i still feel hurt and resentful about the bad stuff he has done.

sb9, your sister sounds just like mine. Will post more later as have to go on school run now, back soon.

opo please do....
Makes you feel crazy doesnt it?!

Am sorry, just wanted to say I am still around but seem to have no time to post much. Having major problems with DH. He has not come home since last night and says he will not be back til sunday. Things have been rocky for a while, but it all blew up last weekend.

To tell the truth, i don't care if he doesn't come back for myself. I think i am better off without him. But i feel so sorry for the kids. They do not deserve this. And i think he is banking on me caving in for the sake of the kids. And i have done in the past but now i just can't do it.

Have got no idea what to do. I feel like talking to the kids and preparing them for us to split up. But I feel so bad, they will be devasted. But I really cannot live with DH anymore. I don't like him and have no respect left for him.

Ok have to go on school run again.

OPo sorry to hear this, I hope you are ok ans that things work out for you.

I'm not posting much these days. I think after the last visit from my parents (DD1'S) birthday I am realising that I am going to have to say something to my mother about the way she is behaving (like giving my son a prsent at DD1'S tea party but making DD1 wait until we got home . She did it when I had gone to the loo with DD1, she said DD1 had to wait- this was a ploy to get an invite back to our house)and this is going to bring on yet another wave of histrionics,but I know that I am going to have to give her a consequence to any reaction- like she won't be able to come to birthdays etc.

It's strange. A big part of me just does not want to see her. The other part of me is in a bit of shock- it feels like our relationship has broken down in a very short space of time and it is all my doing. But I know, I think, that all that has happened is my setting some boundaries has revealed her obsessivness, her uncontrollable desire to be in control of my life.

I went upstairs to the toilet in the restaurant, and DD1 came with me, after about 5 mins (enough time for her to give DS the toy) she came up looking for me and DD1- ARe you in here she's yelling- yes we are. I didn't know where you were she says over and over then starts ushering DD1 out of the room, she then told me that I had to help DD1 down the stairs- I said yes mum, she is my daughter I know how to look after her, but she was not listening. WTF? Who chases after people going to the loo in restaurants and then escorts them back again, telling them how to hold their own child's hand going downstairs?

When I got down I asked her why she gave DS a present and she didn't have an answer. It's not his birthday, I said. But what could I do- I couldn't very well take the thing off him. Poor DD1. Her birthday and her brother gets a present waay before her.

Sorry for rambling on. OPO I really hope you are ok.x